Cursed
by Medie
Summary: Diana learns a lesson... you can't save everyone. DianaOther femmeslash.


Title: Cursed  
  
Author: medie  
  
Fandoms: Greek Mythology/Justice League  
  
Pairing: Cassandra of Troy/Wonder Woman  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Disclaimers: Wonder Woman belongs to DC Comics...Cassandra, pretty sure copyright on her has expired. ;-p  
  
Notes: For the Pairing List That Ate Fandom, Round Seven. Challenge found at ithurtsmybrain  
  
"Cursed"  
by M.  
  
-----------  
  
It seemed Cassandra had always been on the island and Diana always fascinated by her. She remembers the respect Hippolyta afforded the prophetess. The awe with which she was treated by the Amazons. She kept herself apart from the women, living in a small house by the sea, seperate and mysterious. She had been brought to Themyscira by Athena herself, who had asked the Queen to give the woman of Troy shelter. Protection.  
  
Most of the Amazons, knowing of the war of Troy, Cassandra's curse, and her own wish to be left alone did so gladly. Cassandra was no Amazon though she had been given the same gifts as any Amazon. A gift of welcome and a guarantee that no man would ever treat her again the way she had suffered in her life before. She was one of them in name but little more and she made no effort to grow to know the sisterhood of the Nation. She lived in her self-imposed exile, seemingly content, for many years.  
  
Diana had always been curious about her, catching glimpses of the woman walking on the sand, standing on a rock and staring out at the horizon. She'd always wondered. Had coaxed her mother to tell her everything of the woman by the sea. Hippolyta had reluctantly told her daughter of Cassandra's life. Of the gift Apollo had given her and then twisted when the young woman had refused to give herself to him. She spoke of Cassandra's tortured life, how many had thought her mad because of that curse. Never believing what the woman spoke was truth. Diana had always wondered if it were possible to break the curse, she hoped it was, the loneliness that seemed to cloak Cassandra was a tangible pain that she empathized with greatly. She'd determined then, that somehow, she would find a way to break Apollo's curse.  
  
Her mother, touched by her daughter's compassion, had gently questioned her desire. Cassandra was a priestess of Athena, were there anyone that could break such a curse it would have been the goddess herself. Diana had stubbornly insisted that, perhaps, was why Athena had asked to bring the prophetess there. Hippolyta hadn't been able to argue that. She knew better than anyone the curses gods could lay upon those that walked the Earth. She knew too, that sometimes, curses were broken. It pained her to admit, she did not believe, no matter how determined Diana was, that Cassandra's was one of them.  
  
But Diana, in all her stubbornness, was fixed upon the idea to try. She'd begun spending time on the beach, near the land upon which Cassandra's home rested. Many times she would see the woman move about the land around her home. Tending a small garden, feeding what birds would reach the island, and sometimes just staring at the sea for hours at a time as if communing with Poseidon himself.  
  
Days would turn into weeks and weeks into months and Diana would faithfully visit the beach, never venturing closer. Unwilling to encroach upon Cassandra's sanctuary until bidden welcome by the lady herself.  
  
When the moment came, when Diana looked up to find Cassandra standing over her, hair wafting in the breeze, she'd still been so very surprised. What she'd been most surprised by was the sudden wave of nervousness that had overcome her. And how beautiful, and so very sad, Cassandra's eyes were.  
  
"Come..." Cassandra had murmured, holding out her hand. "It is the day."  
  
"The day?" Diana had been so very confused by the statement and she'd wondered if that was not how everyone who met Cassandra felt. If, perhaps, that was how Apollo had cursed her so. But she did not say so. She would not. "The day of what?"  
  
A smile had touched the other woman's face, a gentle, knowing, and perhaps weary, smile. "The day upon which we are to meet."  
  
Cassandra seemed always to know everything and yet she always said nothing. They became friends, she and the princess, and sometimes, sometimes, Diana would have the feeling Cassandra knew more than would speak. That she had seen things that lay ahead for Diana's future but she did not offer anything beyond the occasional cryptic statement and looks filled with things that she did not understand.  
  
As curious as she was, Diana would not ask, did not want to ask Cassandra to risk the curse again. Fearing that, somehow, she would not believe what the other woman would say and she didn't ever want to do that to Cassandra. The world of men had done such and Themyscira was not the world of men. It was to be Cassandra's sanctuary.  
  
Diana wasn't sure when she lost her heart to the prophetess, when it went from compassion and friendship to something else entirely but she does remember the moment she knew. Walking up the path to Cassandra's home and seeing the other woman in the doorway, dressed in a gown the color of the sea, and looking to Diana as if she'd just descended from Olympus itself.  
  
Cassandra had smiled when she reached her, holding out her hand as she had upon the day they'd met and, when Diana had taken it, leaned forward to lightly brush a kiss upon her lips.  
  
"Is this the day upon which we are to love?" Diana's voice had trembled when she'd the question, certain every emotion she felt was written across her soul and laid bare for the other woman to see.  
  
There hadn't been an immediate answer to her question, not one voiced in any spoken language. Cassandra had drawn her into her home and taken her to her bed. There, Diana had, with surprisingly sure hands, removed the soft gown from the seer's body and seen there the scars left by Troy. She'd done her best to soothe each one, her touch bringing soft cries of pleasure to Cassandra's lips and a hint of tears to her eyes.  
  
She can remember, afterwards, laying her head upon the older woman's breast, fingers toying with a lock of her hair and hearing Cassandra murmur, "Rest, Diana, we will have many days upon which we are to love."  
  
Diana had believed then, that this was to be where she would spend her life. In Cassandra's arms, in her bed, and her life. That some day she would rule the Amazons with Cassandra by her side and it would be this way until her days came to an end. If her days came to an end.  
  
But she was wrong.  
  
Cassandra's visions sometimes came to her in dreams, violent nightmares that would cause her to thrash in her sleep, striking out blindly. Diana became accustomed to these dreams, soothing the images away, but one night Cassandra's visions came to her in a dream and she woke first, peacefully.  
  
Diana awoke to find her lover staring at her silently, eyes solemn. She'd asked what was troubling Cassandra, if she had seen something, and the other woman would not answer. Instead, it was Cassandra who had loved Diana that night, her lips and hands bringing the princess to a feverish pitch before letting her fall into orgasm.  
  
Much later, when Diana had been slipping into sleep once more, she'd heard whispered, "Someday, my princess, you will leave this island...forbidden to return."  
  
She'd fallen asleep with a denial on her lips.  
  
It was many, many years later when she walked onto the Javelin, surrounded by the Justice League, that she saw Cassandra, watching from beneath a tree and those whispered words came back to her with a rush of shame.  
  
She hadn't believed.  
  
Like the thousands before her, she hadn't believed.  
  
And, like the people of Troy, her home was lost to her because of it. But worse still...she had failed to believe. She had failed to believe.  
  
She had failed Cassandra.  
  
Finis 


End file.
